Shudder has acquired North American, UK, and Irish rights to Paolo Strippoli’s latest horror fable, THE HOLY BOY (La valle dei sorrisi), following its world premiere at the 2025 Venice Film Festival and celebrated North American debut at Fantastic Fest, where it won the Next Wave Best Director Award and the Audience Award.
The film stars Michele Riondino and breakout first-time actor Giulio Feltri, with production credits including Laura Paolucci, Domenico Procacci, Stefano Sardo, and Ines Vasiljevic. Shudder plans to bring the film to audiences in 2026.
Rather than leaning on the traditional trappings of religious horror, THE HOLY BOY carves out its own chilling space. As noted in our review, the film “carries traces of those classics, but proves itself just as haunting in its own right. Forget head-spinning exorcisms and cheap shocks — this is something quieter, stranger, and every bit as disturbing: a study of grief, faith, and the crushing burden placed on a boy forced to become his community’s saviour.”
The story centres on Sergio (Riondino), a former pro Judoka and sports teacher, who takes a substitute PE post in the remote village of Remis — ominously nicknamed the “Valley of Smiles.” Initially welcomed warmly, Sergio soon discovers that the villagers’ cheerful facade hides a darker truth. On his first night, a drink too many leads to a sudden rage, prompting local woman Michela (Romana Maggiora Vergano) to bring him to the town’s weekly ritual: villagers paying homage to Matteo (Feltri), a withdrawn fifteen-year-old whose embrace is believed to lift all pain and sorrow.
As Sergio grows closer to Matteo, he unearths the sinister nature of the village’s devotion. Our review highlights how THE HOLY BOY “uses this escalating tension to offer a sharp meditation on the dangers of projecting personal sorrow onto another, particularly when that burden falls on someone so young. As Sergio struggles to shield the ‘angel of Remis,’ the village’s rituals and secrets unfold with a relentless intensity, revealing the chilling consequences of misplaced faith and collective obsession.”
Director Strippoli said of the Shudder acquisition, “Shudder is a guiding light in visionary genre cinema, and I am beyond thrilled they will bring THE HOLY BOY to a wider, passionate audience. The film explores our relationship with pain—the shortcuts we take to avoid it, and the way in which pain itself makes us fully human. We imagined a town that does not exist but could, and a ritual that does not exist but could: an uncanny embrace that takes away all suffering. Soon, new audiences will embrace THE HOLY BOY, and discover its terrifying consequences.”
Samuel Zimmerman, Shudder’s Senior Vice President of Programming and Acquisitions, added, “We were blown away by The Holy Boy. Paolo Strippoli crafts an eerie and provocative horror film, one that builds to an astonishing finish. We knew instantly this belonged with Shudder.”
The film’s slow-burn pace allows the audience to settle into the rhythms of village life, before tension tightens and the story spirals into a psychologically charged nightmare. We praised the “knockout performances” from Riondino and Feltri, alongside the “pitch-perfect” villagers who imbue Remis with an unsettling ordinariness. The haunting atmosphere, combined with the village’s tragic past and Matteo’s fraught adolescence, give the film a folkloric, mythic weight that you won’t be able to get out of your head easily.
You can read our full review for this slow-burning nightmare of grief, adolescence, and the unbearable burden placed on a young saviour HERE.
